Web video – which slowly grew from web-cams and MPEG videos in the '90s to the streaming video of YouTube and Vimeo – has ushered in a new era of instant global sharing. Whether it's cats from Japan, music videos from Korea, or political news from Egypt, the world will never be the same.
JenniCam (1996)
Beginning in 1996, Jennifer Ringley started publishing a web-cam transmitting her everyday activities live. She kept her cam live nearly 24 hours a day for seven years. Ringley was sometimes shown nude or engaging in sexual behavior, and there was certainly a pornographic angle to the project. But she would also eat, sleep, work, talk about her life, and play with her pet ferrets (she was on the cover of Modern Ferret magazine in the late '90s) on camera, all the time. At the height of JenniCam's personality, Jennifer's activities were monitored by as many as three to four million people a day and she made a living off of paid subscriptions. She appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman on July 31, 1998. On December 31, 2003, Ringley shut JenniCam.com down over PayPal's new anti-nudity policy, but before she turned off the camera she had a huge impact on the future of pornography, television, and the whole idea of privacy.
"I keep JenniCam live not because I want or need to be watched, but because I simply don’t mind being watched.” - Jennifer Ringley
Source: youtube.com
